Read in my Kindle omnibus edition of "The Human Comedy" from Project Gutenberg.

I found this short story very amusing! Perhaps it was all the funnier for me having just listened to the abridged audiobook of "Dangerous Liaisons" as the Marquise de Listomere was so similar to Madame de Tourvel. Unfortunately for her, Eugene de Rastignac isn't another Valmont and the love letter he sent her was meant for another woman!! ( )

Two short stories about two very complex women are included on the CD. The first, and very short Étude de Femme (Study of a Woman in English) features the handsome Eugène de Rastignac, found in several Balzac novels. Here, he has somehow attracted the attention of the marquise de Listomère, a woman well known for her irreproachable character who has never taken on lovers. She isn't Rastignac's type either, being rather plain, but when Rastignac mistakenly sends her a letter intended for his current lover Delphine de Nucingen, an interesting situation arises which reveals in few words a great deal about the marquise.

The second story, La Grande Bretèche is a wonderfully wicked Gothic extravaganza. When doctor Horace Bianchon discovers a dilapidated and abandoned house which has obviously been a beautifully appointed domain in the past, he becomes fascinated with it and cannot resist roaming it's grounds and unsuccessfully trying to enter the house to discover the secret hidden behind it's walls. He is promptly visited by a notary who warns him that he has been illegally loitering on private property. The notary is the executor of the former occupant's will. In it, Madame de Merret decrees that no one is to enter the house or make any changes or repairs to it for fifty years following her death. We find out why she has made this strange request as her story unfolds. I'm sure it would have delighted Hitchcock, who may well have derived inspiration from it. ( )